Do You Have a Social Media Will?

Sunday evening, chilling on the couch with the extra screen on my lap. Twitter humming in the background, while I catch up with email, reading and some of the Olympic events I have not seen yet (yeah for first Gold of The Netherlands!). #BlogChat in full swing, where Darren Rowse posted an interesting Tweet.

I have a 'blog will'. Its a couple of pages for my wife on what to do with it if I pass on. Passwords, people to seek help from #blogchat

Darren is right, you can never be too prepared. Off course you don't expect an accident to happen, but if these do happen, you want your significant others to be well taken care off. Reminds me, I have to take care of this...

Social Media Will

But what about your social media accounts. Do you have a will which would allow your family to take control of your online identity? It can be so painful for your friends and family to see your smiling face staring at them between their Facebook friends, while you are no longer there.

A couple of years ago, a colleague of mine died. It was a sudden death, not expected at all, although she had been sick for a while. For the last couple of years, I've been getting birthday alerts on Facebook on the day she was born. Although a great celebration of her life, the personal profile page was exactly the same as on the day she had died. The family never took control of her profile page, which is still up.

And last year, an ex-colleague from eBay had a terrible accident, and died because of it. I'm still getting recommendations to connect with him on LinkedIn, as we might know each other since we both have worked at eBay.

Be Prepared

Although you never expect it, you can never be too careful. I think the pre-cautions Daren is taking with his Blog Will, it would be good to include the log-in and password of your social media profiles as well. It's something you just have to do!